I don’t think I’ll ever get used to winter in Seattle. I am beginning to see the fleeting light of my fourth spring here, and, though normally I am ecstatic this time of year for the return of the light and warmth, this year it seems like that same feeling of rebirth and energy is missing.
Spring really is a beautiful time here. There is just so much green; green that wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t such a wet place. Every year around April the dark lessens, the air warms, and the rain slowly retreats, ever warmer and less frequent, into the most beautiful summer you can imagine before once again running away for nine months.
Once the flowers start to bloom and life returns to the land, it has always felt like life is also breathed back into me. I have terrible seasonal affective disorder, or, I did. I was really hoping that this winter would be different, because I am different, and, it was, but not in the way I was hoping.
My life seems to have taken on a path of extremes. Where before starting my transition I existed in a state of constant melancholy, reaching down to despair, I now fluctuate between extreme happiness and extreme agitation. On one hand I have the endless sea of love and care that is my relationship with my partner, who continues to surprise me with the depth of her love for me, and on the other I am bearing witness to the destruction of my homeland as it is gutted and resold to the highest bidder.
Being trans in America in 2025, or, honestly, being a person with a lick of sense in America in 2025, has become akin to watching a car crash in molasses. The die is cast, the stage is set, we all know where this is going, but the process into fascism seems inexorably slow. With the blanket tariffs, and the elimination of wealth with a speed and magnitude which has never been seen before, I think no one that isn’t caught up in the cult thinks that this ends any other way. At least the orange rectal fissure got one thing right, he is going to run this country like a business, which is to say, burn it down and sell it off to the highest bidder.
The April 5th protests were the largest ones yet, and somehow the sycophants think that it’s all a ruse. The protesters were paid, the images were AI generated, whatever mental gymnastics they have to do to make it seem like the path they are on is the righteous one. History will not look fondly on this time, yet the outcome will not be a return to American greatness.
If the twentieth century was the century of pax americana, then the twenty-first will be the century of American despair. We are no longer “the good guys,” hell, we probably never were. John Wayne isn’t coming in to save the day. In fact, like John Wayne, who made a name for himself playing a soldier on the silver screen while other men gave their lives in war, yet never went to war himself, America has become that which it originally opposed, a bloated tyrant inflicting its personality on distant shores.
A lack of equality and fairness is the problem here. As long as one group, one country, one person, holds more power than another, there can never truly be peace. For a long time I thought we were moving in the right direction. I harbored the light of hope in my heart for so long, yet like the dull spring in Seattle I now face, that light has dwindled and the magic seems to be fleeting. I loved this country. This is my home, but I do not feel at home here. I have no intention of leaving, but my duty is not to this land, but to those who dwell in it. I do not know if I any longer wish to identify myself as American. I simply exist as a citizen of humanity, who hopes that with each action going forward that I am on the side of goodness and love.
The wheels of history will continue to turn, and just as how a dreary spring will give way to the light and energy of summer, this will pass. The house divided will fall, and the survivors will build a new house, one with its walls made to include all, and it’s foundation built on the weary packed earth of history.
Let us hope that next time we remember.
Sans Seraph 